Ben Dunno, Warri
Scores of Niger Delta youths have urged President Muhammadu Buhari, to ensure the political leaders, elders, officials of Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) and National Assembly members indicted in series of corrupt practices in the commission were made to face justice.

The youths who staged a peaceful protest along the major NPA expressway by the Effurun Roundabout in Uvwie Uvwie Local Government area, yesterday, said they can no longer be docile while some greedy and self seeking leaders continue to loot their common wealth and heritage.

The placard carrying youths who registered their displeasure over the unprecedented fraud and monumental embezzlement of public funds being revealed as the ongoing investigations of NDDC continued, said enough is enough of the further impoverishment of the region by a few cabal in positions of authority.

Speaking on behalf of the youth bodies cut across Ijaw, Urhobo, Itsekiri, Isoko, Anioma ethnic nationalies under the auspices of Concerned Niger Delta Youths, its Coordinator, Comrade Israel Joe, said there can never be a better time to tackle the decades of corruption in NDDC than this critical moment.

According to him; “We are therefore using this protest to appeal to President Muhammadu Buhari, to as matter of urgent public interest set up a panel of Inquiry to investigate, arrest and probe everyone that has been indicted or involved in the NDDC scam”.

“We totally condemned the way and manner the Niger Delta leaders have turned the commission into an ATM with different password in forms of contracts and inflation of ghost projects”.

“We are also seeking the intervention of foreign bodies in the ongoing forensic audit so as to be able to achieve an unbiased report that would revealed those leaders behind the many years of rot in NDDC that had inpeded on the growth of the region”.

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“Consequently, we demand that all the Niger Delta leaders irrespective of age and status, the political elites across the region and the National Assembly members that had been indicted in the NDDC scam since inception be made to face justice in the interest of posterity”, Joe stated.

Also speaking, another youth leader, Comrade Kelvin Ejumudo, urged the Niger Delta youths to rise up to the occasion at a time like this and demand justice from the few cabal who had not only mortgaged their future but that of their children yet unborn.

“Look around you today, you will see abject poverty in the land. Indigenes on whose land the oil are being explored cannot afford three square meals, no access to good health care, no quality education, no roads, no portable water and no electricity and yet some leaders had been living fat on the Commission set up to bring succour to them.”

“The careless spendings in the NDDC which has led to underdevelopment in both human and infrastructure need to be addressed now and we want to believe that its only the present administration of President Muhammadu Buhari that can putva permanent stop to looting in the Commission”, Ejumudo declared.

A female protesters, Miss Irene Uzor, condermed the attitude of the Niger Delta leaders to the plights of their people, describing them as wicked and insensitive to the decades of sufferings and pains of the people in the region.

She noted that; “If things are not rightly put in place, the youth may someday rebel against their leaders who have perpetually mortgaged their future”